Amazon and Google are in a race to expand their voice assistants to more countries. While both Google Assistant and Alexa are already available in the United Kingdom, neither have a presence in Ireland. Today, Amazon announced that Alexa is officially available in the country, with some of the company's Echo speakers also making a debut.

It was already possible to import an Echo speaker into Ireland, but the setup process was complicated, since the official Alexa mobile apps were unavailable in the country. Starting today, people in Ireland can buy Echo speakers (including the second-gen Echo, the Echo Plus, and Echo Dot) straight from Amazon UK. Several Irish brands have already created Alexa skills, like RTÉ News and Ryanair.

Now that Alexa Voice Service is officially available in Ireland, manufacturers can also bring their Alexa-enabled products to the country. IKEA, Netatmo, Hive, Lightwave, Energenie, and others have already announced they will start selling products using Alexa in Ireland.